#CopperheadCounty

#CopperheadCounty

This week, we wrapped the first season of my second playtest campaign for Copperhead County, my modern-southern-Forged-in-the-Dark game. RIYL: Blades in the Dark, Breaking Bad, Justified, The Wire, Fargo.

To celebrate, and to observe my ongoing attempts to finish this game, I’m going to recap the season, and show off both PC and crew playbooks, and the county map.

Copperhead County, modern crime Forged in the Dark, buy it from me sometime in 2018! Enjoy this preview, and read on for exciting criminal adventures.

Playbooks preview:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1byaA6PohQN7trutrmhCblXBVVqG6INVf

In this game, we follow the exploits of the Hunnicutt family, a crew of Blood relatives who live in the fictional city of Patterson, TN, the seat of Copperhead County. At the start of the season, the Hunnicutts were not seasoned criminals, but turned to crime to raise money for their father, Ezekiel, a retired cop who now struggles with lung disease.

The Hunnicutts are:

Zeke, the Stringer. The oldest son, his business career cratered after a failed start-up and he now uses his financial acumen to lead the crew. Played by Adam Maunz.

Earl, the Cleaner. The younger son, he’s a city detective just like his dad, but very willing to abuse the badge, and his powers of observation, to do crimes. Played by Tyler Ellis.

Eustace, the Mover. Ezekiel’s younger brother, he’s a life-long fuck-up who recently left prison, and is at the forefront of making dangerous, violent decisions for the crew. Played by Adam Schwaninger.

The main trio are joined by Zeke and Earl’s sister Gwen, a county medical examiner / NPC Expert, and their idiot cousin Wayne, their starting Connection, who deals drugs out of a local Zip Burger restaurant.

With Wayne’s help, they started the season by ripping off a dealer who used to work with Wayne, but spurned him to find greater success with the College Street Crew, a tier-1 faction of college students and dropouts who run a party-drug ring. Deciding to double-down on drug-dealing, they decided to figure out the CSC’s workings, and possibly recruit, or eliminate, their drug cook. Eventually, they sniffed out the CSC’s lab (in the basement of a campus maintenance building) and kidnapped the cook, but the CSC came back on them and took Wayne hostage, and the two sides reached a deal where the hostilities would cease, but the Hunnicutts would pay the CSC a tithe after every job, in return for the CSC acting as their MDMA supplier. The Hunnicutts thus completed a Drug Game claim, but bristled at having to bow to these damn millennials.

Meanwhile, each of the Hunnicutts dealt with their own issues:

Zeke’s wife, Liz, a teacher, was recruited by the local Democratic Party in a long-shot bid to win a special election for County Trustee, an important position controlling the distribution of public funds. This eventually put the crew on the radar of the Barnett Mob, a tier-3 faction of no-drama dealers and corrupters who run the east side of the city, and apparently are in deep with the anemic County Democrats. Zeke made contact with a Barnett captain, and agreed to cooperate with them to covertly support his wife’s campaign, leading to the crew breaking into a GOP fundraiser at a country club, and planting a bug in the private lounge where the county’s powerbrokers gather (a bit of The Americans in our game).

Earl found himself embroiled in an affair with his superior officer, Det. Sgt. Kathy Lind, when he ran into her in the supply closet while ripping off police supplies to use on a job, and responded to it by seducing her. This started a “Lind Trouble” clock, and for the next several downtimes, Earl had to avert her suspicions of his mysterious wounds and comings-and-goings. Eventually, the Lind Trouble clock completed when Eustace tailed her and found out she herself was bent, and on the payroll of the Mountain Mafia, the tier-4 masters of county corruption.

Eustace, an expert driver, auditioned for a pseudo-reality TV show filming in the county, a fake Smoky-and-the-Bandit style series about hillbilly drivers. He ended up competing against his rival, Billie Jo Holloway, a young racer whose mother Eustace shared a brief affair with back in the 90s. Eustace won the race, and the further ire of Billie Jo, and eventually found himself served with papers from her mother Bobbie Jean, seeking a paternity test and back child support. Is it possible Eustace is…. a father?!

The season came to a head this week. Since the Hunnicutts had ruined the College Street Crew’s campus pill lab, the CSC made them find a new place they could cook. Eustace took this chance to find an abandoned trailer in the mountains and fix it up a little bit, planning to lure the CSC into an ambush there. To make this easier, they recruited their cousin Grace, a former addict and convict who recruited a Gang out of her old shitkicker friends.

When the time came to lure the CSC to the trailer, their engagement roll was a 3: it turned out the CSC also planned to double-cross the Hunnicutts, and had invited goons working for Baron Carter, a tier-2 local warlord, who was to be their new drug-dealing partner. Luckily, Grace and her goons were up on a hill overlooking the trailer, and the Hunnicutts proceeded to roll crit after crit and demolish both enemy gangs, only leaving the CSC’s cook, Roy Reyes, alive. Roy agreed to surrender and cook for the Hunnicutts in exchange for them leaving the rest of his crew alone (what little now remained).

However, just as the Hunnicutts enjoyed their triumph, their lives were complicated when Detective Lind arrived on the scene, having tailed Earl from the city. It turned out she had notified her masters in the Mountain Mafia about what was going down, and soon Jock Richards, a bald MM captain, arrived to negotiate with the Hunnicutts. Luckily, the crits were not done, and Zeke managed to strike a deal with him where, in exchange for now paying regular tribute to the Mountain Mafia, they’d protect the Hunnicutts and loop them into Lind’s corrupt-police ring, allowing them use of the Police Payroll claim.

As the season ends, the Hunnicutts have broken into the county’s corrupt power structure, affording their patriarch’s medical care (he is now doing slightly better after a lung transplant) by becoming drug dealers, killing several people, and co-opting the rest of their family into crime. Liz Hunnicutt, Democratic candidate for County Trustee, has no idea what Zeke’s been up to, but if she wins her race, she’ll soon find herself in the middle of drama she never imagined. Earl must still balance his career as a cop with his criminal life, now with the added complication of he and his boss-lover knowing all about each other’s secrets. And will Eustace get on television and dedicate himself to late fatherhood, or will his hair-trigger temper mess it all up? Find out next season…